The native Aymara lives in a dirt-floor hut in an isolated hamlet near Lake Titicaca at 4,000 metres above sea level. He is illiterate, speaks no Spanish and has no teeth.

He walks without a cane and doesn’t wear glasses. And though he speaks Aymara with a firm voice, one must talk into his ear to be heard.

“I see a bit dimly. I had good vision before. But I saw you coming,” he tells journalists who visit after a local TV report touts him as the world’s oldest person.

Hobbling down a dirt path, Flores greets them with a raised arm, smiles and sits down on a rock. His gums bulge with coca leaf, a mild stimulant that staves off hunger. Like most Bolivian highlands peasants, he has been chewing it all his life.

Guinness World Records says the oldest living person verified by original proof of birth is Misao Okawa, a 115-year-old Japanese woman. The oldest verified age was 122 years and 164 days: Jeanne Calment of France, who died in 1997.

Guinness spokeswoman Jamie Panas said it wasn’t aware of a claim being filed for the Bolivian.

“I should be about 100 years old or more,” Flores says. But his memory is dim.

The director of Bolivia’s civil registrar, Eugenio Condori, showed The Associated Press the registry that lists Flores’ birthdate as July 16, 1890.

Condori said birth certificates did not exist in Bolivia until 1940. Births were previously registered with baptism certificates provided by Roman Catholic priests. “For the state, the baptism certificate is valid,” he said.

He said he couldn’t show Flores’ baptism certificate to the AP because it is a private document.

To what does Flores owe his longevity?

“I walk a lot, that’s all,” says Flores, who long herded cattle and sheep. “I don’t eat noodles or rice, only barley. I used to grow potatoes, beans, oca.”

He says he doesn’t drink alcohol now but did in his youth. He’s eaten a lot of mutton, and though he likes pork it is hardly available. He fondly remembers hunting and eating fox as a younger man.

He sorely misses his wife, who died more than a decade ago. Of their three children only one is still alive: Cecilio, age 67. There are 40 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren but most have left Frasquia.